Our detailed and publicly available guidance is clear on this point and on data sharing. We will investigate fully where there is any suggestion that practitioners have not followed this guidance correctly. Where necessary, we will issue a reminder to all local partners that there is a clear legal framework within which they must operate and that any information shared has to be necessary, proportionate and lawful.

Prevent is about addressing the root causes of radicalisation and about protecting vulnerable individuals. Prevent can only be successful in addressing the longer term threat by working together with communities to develop and sustain trust and mutual respect. It is disappointing that your article could potentially do much to damage that.

Alan Johnson MP

Home secretary

• The Newham Prevent strategy is based on our approach to community cohesion: work programmes to bring diverse communities together. We do not apologise for working with the police in pursuance of our common objective of deterring terrorism. But there is another strand. With West Ham United we are promoting the mayor of Newham's Unity football and cricket tournaments, reaching out to thousands of young people. With the help of educational charities and using a government schools kit we hope to take a positive message of hope, mutual respect and tolerance into schools. Local groups will be encouraged to develop their own anti-extremist programmes through Prevent. Not exactly spying!

Cllr Unmesh Desai

Vice-chair, Labour group, London Borough of Newham

• Whatever the reality of the activities of Muslim extremists, I can't believe the values that drive them are a great deal more offensive and contemptuous of diversity than those expressed by Ed Husain and quoted in the Guardian (Spying morally right, says thinktank chief, 17 October). Unlike Muslim extremists, however, Mr Husain is apparently charged with "keeping safe" the population of the UK, including "liberal do-gooders" (presumably meaning those who, like me, believe all people have something to offer society, and that treating people with respect rather than contempt is how to bring out their potential). Yet if Mr Husain's words can lead me – a white, middle-class, married, mortgaged parent – hurtling towards a feeling of revolt against him and the government that sponsors him and his work, what on earth must a member of his real "target" population think? Because I'm the type of person I am, I restrict myself to writing letters to the Guardian, but there are other routes for anger to take. By his every word, every action, Mr Husain drives the development of extremism rather than prevents it.

Dr Andrew Whitworth

Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

• The government's Prevent programme is disastrous. It is based on deeply flawed and offensive assumptions. The programme is said to be "aimed at preventing Muslims from being lured into violent extremism". Muslims, however, are not a homogeneous group and the notion that communities should be implicated in, held accountable and punished for the actions of a few is both problematic and unacceptable.

In targeting Muslim communities in this way, government is forcing otherwise diverse majorities to become an "us" or a "them". It requires us to assume or accept a particular identity as our dominant identity, thereby subsuming our many other identities.

The polarising effects of this policy will succeed only in silencing those voices from all communities that challenge such a false dichotomy. A deeply repulsive and divisive strategy will not unite us; it will do nothing to make any of us safer and everything to put all of us at increasing risk. We will reap what government sows.